“Pretty never helped a man like a mule,” warned friends of the beauteous young artist Rose O’Neill when she took a fancy to handsome, aristocratic Virginian, Grey Latham.
Rose O’Neill, after a three-year stint as a child actress, had dazzled judges in art contests from the age of 14, and became a professional illustrator when her precocious drawings so astonished adjudicators that they made her sit in front of them and produce work by her own hand before they would give her first prize.
In 1893, she moved to New York City and lived in a convent. Back then, a girl’s virtue not only counted for something, its reputation was fragile. Nuns accompanied the stunner O’Neill on visits to publishing houses where editors were captivated by the art of the teenaged girl. She worked for numerous major clients and produced over 700 illustrations and cartoons for a series of famous publications, including the legendary magazine Puck. Her income and reknown bloomed like a rose.
However practical considerations were not a concern for O’Neill. She took up with Grey Latham, who visited her while she was guarded by nuns in New York. He also traveled to her family’s country home. Smitten by the handsome Latham, Rose made him the model for the gorgeous men in many an illustration.
Latham was a beaux of the old school, the son of a Confederate officer turned chemist and professor. He did not take well to work, and neither did his decorative brothers Otway and Percy, both of whom were clever and well-liked, but were raised to believe that gentlemen did not labor.
Their father, Major Woodville Latham, had survived the fall of the Confederacy. He was tough-minded and ambitious. From an old Southern family, he was born into wealth and privilege. But as the fortunes of the day changed, Latham had to seek new business ventures to keep him and his family living in the style to which they had been born.
One year after Rose O’Neill first went to New York City to seek her fortune as an illustrator and cartoonist, the Lathams and a school chum sauntered down the avenue of the big city where they stumbled across the new wonder of the age: the Kinetoscope.
The tiny peepshow screen featured a popular performer of the day doing gymnastic routines. Grey Latham saw dollar signs.
“There, that’s a business to get into,” he declared. “I’ll tell you what! Everybody’s crazy about prize fights, and all we have to do is to get Edison to photograph a fight for this machine and we can take it out and make a fortune on it.”
Otway and Grey Latham, Samuel J. Tilden, Jr., and Enoch Rector formed the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company, and formed an alliance with Edison, giving them a contract that would restrict their Kinetoscope efforts to fight exhibitions while Edison’s other scientists tried to develop their own films and technologies.
The technical limitations of the Kinetoscope were daunting, especially considering the length of a prize fight. The Kinetoscope could only hold a negative of 50 feet, too short to record an entire fight.
Rector was able to come up with new Kinetoscope technology that allowed them to flim longer and longer segments of the fight. They then set up the kinetoscopes in a parlor to which patrons could come and view segments of the fight on a series of scopes screens.
The results were sensational. They had created the longest film to date, and the Lathams, once bordering on shabby genteel, were the dandies of the town. Police had to control the crowds wanting a look at the modern marvel.
However, it wasn’t long before the public lost their taste for peep shows and prize fights. As business trickled off, they began to seek new ways of making movies and showing them.
“You see, if we could project that picture on a sheet, like the stereoptican slides, there’d be a fortune in it. Can we do it?” asked Otway Latham.
“You can project anything on a screen that you can see with the naked eye and which can be photographed,” replied Woodville Latham.
The Lathams and their small company – together with Edison company employees – came up with the technology to not only project motion picture film onto a screen, but they created one of the most important tiny bits of common sense tech ever: the Latham Loop.
The Latham Loop is that loop of slack film that winds around the projector wheels. That small loop keeps the film from catching and tearing itself up. This enables the projector to run long strips of film.
The result: the Latham’s filmed another fight, and on May 20, 1895, the world saw the first film projection on a screen.
There were squabbles and lawsuits over who did what, with Edison and his company claiming much of the credit. The court battles went on for 13 years, and the Lathams were crushed.
However, when Rose O’Neill met Grey, he was the toast of New York. They wed in 1896.
Hard working O’Neill was the main breadwinner and a celebrity in her own right. There was even a popular song that is supposed to be about her: the Rose of Washington Square. The lyrics, and a very old recording of the song are available here.
Grey Latham was a beautiful beaux, but a lazy rat. Content to rest on his laurels, he was also content to rest on hers, and was not above squandering her money. His film ambitions notwithstanding, he was not considered a responsible man by many who knew him.
Grey made several movies as a director and is listed as Gray Latham at IMDB.Side-Walks of New York (1897), Bullfight (1896), Drill of the Engineer Corps (1896), are the only listings of his work at the site, though there were a few other attempts at film making. They are not works of art, but are very important to the history of art, among the first motion picture films for the screen ever made.
Latham loved to gamble, loved the high life, and exploited his talented and successful wife.
Apparently, this established the pattern for filmakers screwing over cartoonists that has continued to this day.
Latham plundered Rose’s earnings, and she finally left him, only to return later. But the pretty man mulishly refused to change his ugly ways, and Rose, on more than one occasion, found herself arriving at her publisher’s office to pick up her payment, only to discover that her decorative louse of a husband had beaten her to it, leaving her so broke she could not even afford cab fare home.
Finally, in 1901, Rose O’Neill had enough. She dumped pretty Grey Latham.
Mistreating Rose O’Neill was the dumbest of all Grey Latham’s dumb moves, because not only was she about to become one of the world’s most famous women, she was about to become filthy rich as well.
After another unsuccessful marriage, this time to her dour Puck editor, O’Neill retreated to her family home in rural Bonniebrooke where she came up with a series of drawings featuring cute, pudgy, cupid-like characters called…well…Kewpies.
The Kewpies became a worldwide phenomenon as a cartoon strip and as merchandising. O’Neill herself carved the first Kewpie statue, and her earnings from the Kewpies came to about $1.5 million dollars, making her the highest paid woman illustrator in the world. At a time when the average US income was around $500 per year, O’Neill’s earnings would be worth about $35 million dollars now. Income tax was dead low, so her dollars went far.
Grey Latham, who had used O’Niell’s money to finance his film ambitions and lifestyle didn’t get a penny of the real fortune that was to come.
Perhaps that is why, one year later, the still very young Latham was dead. So was his brother Otway. Brokenhearted Major Woodville followed his sons in 1911, but lives forever in cinema history.
As for O’Neill, her generosity was legendary, and her multiple homes were used as the salons of the rich and famous, including poet/philosopher Kahlil Gabran.
However, Kewpie money began to wane by the 1930′s. O’Neill had already taken a hit when her German kewpie-making factory was stilled by WWI. O’Neill, who loved her new, affluent lifestyle ran low on cash.
Her timing for her new artistic venture was lousy. Trying to recreate the Kewpie Phenom, she came up with a new character called HoHo, a cute, laughing little Asian Buddha.
Just in time for Pearl Harbor.
No wonder she began having strokes.
O’Neill was dead broke in her beloved estate Bonniebrooke by 1944, having written her incomplete memoirs that are especially incomplete on the subject of the natty but ratty Latham.
The story of Rose O’Neill and Grey Latham…film and comics, together – and squabbling – from day 1.
c
FOLLOW UP POST HERE: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEWPIES!
This post originally appeared on the old blog, but has been updated and images have been added, some from my personal collection of the work of Rose O’Neill. Photo of the Latham family from the Picture Showman blog, an excellent cinema history resource where you can learn more about the Lathan loop.
Thanks for stopping by.
Many thanks to the Rose O’Neill Museum for their kind words of encouragement and support.
Art and photos are public domain.
Your blog is full of amazing tid bits!! This is such an incredible story and I had never heard of her. Such an amazing woman illustrator and living in that day. Incredible. What a great read! Thank you for reposting!
It’s not just the film directors screwing over cartoonists that has the long tradition, Colleen, it’s the chronic undervaluing of the young “artist lady”. “She’s only there to be taken advantage of!”
Fascinating story.
I wrote a good deal of this stuff years ago, back when I was just starting to blog. Most people have never seen this stuff, so I am happy for a chance to re-post it. Maybe more people will get a chance to read it now.
I suppose it goes without saying that Rose O’Neill is my idol. It is hard to find solid info about her. Most of the info dwells on the Kewpies. I am more interested in biographical info.
Women didn’t even have the right to vote prior to 1920, which I believe underscores the significance of O’Neill’s accomplishments. I’m aware that things aren’t all peaches ‘n’ cream for women today, even in the U.S. O’Neill wasn’t just grappling with societal attitudes towards women, though; inequality was written into many of the very laws that governed our country. Yet not even that was enough to suppress her ingenuity; her creation became part of our cultural lexicon. Many’s the time I’ve heard or read someone say, “Give that [man or woman] a Kewpie Doll!” (Admittedly, it’s a lot less common these days.) Also, even though she lost a fortune, it’s noteworthy that a woman during that era amassed a fortune to lose.
I’d never once given thought to what “Kewpie Dolls” were or where they came from. I had no idea they were created by such a remarkable woman, with such a storied life. Thanks for sharing this again, Colleen.
Rose O’Neill is almost never mentioned in comics history tomes, gets no posthumous awards, and is rarely even considered in comics histories that focus on women creators and creations. I think her feminine qualities repulse some modern feminists, which is a shame. Rose O’Neill was an early feminist who marched as a suffragette. I have copies of photos.
I’m not among those who think that feminine and feminist are mutually exclusive. And considering the social mores of the day, Rose O’Neill was extraordinarily progressive. She was a success worldwide, she was financially successful, she ran her own business, and she did it at a time when women didn’t even have the right to vote.
BTW, I can’t be the only person out there who has a family history littered with tales of the fortunes of young women squandered by ratty beaus. Women didn’t have a lot of control over their money, back in the day.
I seem to come from lines where the women were pretty independant, all things considered. But you’re making me think that I don’t know as much about them as I’d like.
My father’s mother was one of three sisters – one of whom remained a “maiden lady”. “Aunt Dot” she was to us (I vaguely remember visiting her on Ottowa once). I *think* she supported herself by assembling precut wood pieces, doing the close carving on them, finishing them and selling them. I have a fine table (card table size) with these graceful legs and beautiful finishing. Alas the surface is damaged, and I’ll have to replace it (mahogany veneer, so it’s going to be a pretty penny to restore).
Her sister, my grandmother, apparently had a respitory ailment of some sort, as she moved from Ottowa to Calgary – by herself – for the mountain air. And this very early in the 20th century (since my dad was born in 1913). That’s where my grandfather met her — and he was 11 years her junior, but they had over 50 years of happy marriage.
One of that grandfather’s half sisters, unmarried, decided to go to India as a missionary, beginning her service there in 1920 and serving until the early 1950s. One of her sisters ran a small independent business, a tiny gift / knick knack shop in the main bank building in my hometown.
My mother’s mother moved from Scotland to Nova Scotia (though I don’t know if it was prior to getting married, or whether my grandfather had actually gone back to “the Old Country” to find a wife). Since my maternal grandfather was a minister, he chose to do his ministry in Trinidad, where my mom was born. And mom went to college at a time when few women did.
Even though my parents were not real big on telling “family stories”, with women like that in my background, I don’t think I really registered the history of what women were not allowed to do, at least while I was growing up. I look back *now* and think how extraordinary they were and bold.
I like reading about gals like Rose O’Neill.
Are any of Trina’s books about women cartoonists still in print? They’re all very readable and full of wonderful tidbits of art and info.
My favourite female artist of that period was Ethel Hays. And these two weren’t the only ones. While comic books were a largely “boys only” club (though there were a number of women who worked in the production line “shops” during the 40s), women had a degree of success in other fields of illustration.
I don’t know if any of her books are still in print, but it should be noted that Hays et al were decades after O’Neill’s success.
I didn’t care for Trina’s treatment of O’Neill in the histories I read. Much more attention was given to Nell Brinkley and the like, none of whom were nearly as influential or successful as O’Neill. They are fine books, but there is little information about O’Neill to be found in them.
Robbins made a rather unflattering comment in the book about O’Nell’s penchant for babytalk, insinuating that this was the reason for her divorce from her second husband.
O’Neill was childlike and bubbly, while her husband was dour and sullen. I have never read anywhere that O’Neill’s babytalk was the reason for the break up of that marriage, merely that the two were unsuited to one another. O’Neill was, once again, the primary power in the household. Her husband even quit his job and moved to her family home to write novels, which O’Neill illustrated.
O’Neill may have made babytalk around the house, but baby owned that house.
They were married for five years, the same period of time O’Neill was married to her first husband.
Neither husband enjoyed the fruits of O’Neill’s success with the kewpies, which didn’t happen until O’Neill was 35 years old.
Hi, Colleen! Thanks for those wondeful posts! I didn’t know about O’Neill either, but her story was a fascinating one. I already added the book you recommend to my cart on Amazon for my next purchase!
I don’t know If I told you that the new blog looks great!! Big hugs from Portugal!!!
Hello from rural Bonniebrook! You’ve posted more accurate information about Rose than most, and I’m delighted to find you are one of her admirers. By the way, she was honored last year by the National Women’s History Project as a visionary artist, and is listed as a famous Missourian by the State Historical Society of Missouri. I’m also writing to invite you to Bonniebrook to help us celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rose’s creation of the Kewpies. Our annual Open House is Saturday afternoon, April 25, 2009– free and open to the public, with refreshments and live entertainment. We (the Bonniebrook Historical Society) own and maintain the rebuilt O’Neill mansion here, as well as a museum and gallery with more than 50 original O’Neill artworks on display. Come see us at http://www.RoseONeill.org or live and in person in the Ozarks!— Roxanne Young, Secretary, Bonniebrook Historical Society
This is very exciting news! I will move this info to the front page of my blog for the Monday lead! Thanks so VERY much. I would love to visit the museum sometime!